Good Debate. Sarah Palin was brilliant. The nastiness will undoubtedly ramp up almost immediately. One of the talking heads on Fox said “She said ‘doggone it’ more than once. I suppose that plays well in flyover country.” And he immediately began getting angry e-mails. What is it about these people who believe themselves to be part of a lofty elite because they appear on television?

Joe Biden was better than usual. He has been tasked with an awful job — denying that Obama ever said any of the things that Obama previously said. Giving Obama credit for things he didn’t do, blaming everything on Bush and claiming that McCain is just like Bush in spite of McCain’s actual positions. That is a lot of whoppers to remember. You had to pity the man.

Yoo Hoo, Joe. The financial meltdown is directly traceable to Democrat’s legislative demand that loans be made to people who could not qualify for loans. There is clear evidence in the legislation, and in the votes in Congress. It’s silly to try to pretend that Obama saw this financial mess coming and worked to prevent it. Good grief! Senator Barack ACORN was working hard to increase the problem and had been for years. He trained activists, supported them with other people’s money, acted as their counsel in court, and as a senator, funneled tax money — lots of it — to ACORN.

The Obama campaign is heavily invested in making Americans believe that everything is terrible, and that everyone in the middle class is desperate. I suppose if you tell people often enough that they are suffering, at some point they will start to believe it. Then the Messiah can arrive to rescue you. Don’t be disappointed when it doesn’t work. Obama’s economic plans are, perhaps, even scarier than his foreign policy plans.

Past history says that the vice presidential debate has little effect on the election. But this is a strange year. Polls show that only about 13% of Americans can distinguish between the two parties or explain their differences. That is fairly scary too.

Tonight we have the vice-presidential debate. I have never seen anything like the Democrat attack on Sarah Palin. She really terrifies them. Imagine sending a crowd of 30 lawyers to Alaska to investigate every aspect of her life, pockets full of cash, to find something, anything to discredit her. They obviously didn’t find much of anything since they have stretched credulity so far in their attacks. And one of the leading media outlets — Washington Post? Newsweek? — has 4 people in Alaska going through dumpsters, and another 4 in Arizona doing the same thing.

The hard, lacquered women with their designer shoes and their foul mouths hateSarah Palin. Mary Graber, writing at Pajamas Media claims that what the feminists hate is:

That Palin thinks like a man, or logically, is what has made the left livid. As appropriate to their modes, they respond emotionally….

While anti-reason theories circulate and were repeated in academic discourse, in politics the new ethic of “caring” was promoted by Bill Clinton and in the media by women’s talk shows like Oprah, Ellen, and The View, where politics was wedged into teary discussions about makeovers in fashion and self-esteem. Barack Obama, with his “community organizer” experience, recalls the efforts of women with settlement houses, as proto-social workers.

Women — and men who think like women — rule the liberal media and grant such emotion-based politics legitimacy. But the other side of the “caring” coin is the personality-based “critical” side — a nasty, catty one, indeed.

The confusion of the two spheres, the application of “caring” that is appropriately reserved for the domestic sphere where all fetuses are allowed to be birthed and nurtured, is illustrated by Palin, who does not make such confusions. She does not infuse public policy with those notions suited for the home by promoting increased welfare, negotiation with terrorists, and efforts to “understand’ the root causes of terrorism, as Obama said we should do in his post-9/11 speech.

It’s an interesting discussion, and food for thought. Do read the whole thing, linked above.

We’ll see how Sarah Palin does tonight. In the flood of media attacks belittling her family, her hometown, her moose-hunting, do remember that she has governed the largest state in the union so successfully that she has approval ratings beyond the wildest dreams of most politicians. And those approval ratings came from executive accomplishments in a state where more responsibility falls on the governors shoulders than any other except New York and Massachusetts.

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The New York Times has a long article from the Obama campaign in today’s paper on Sarah Palin. They sent some 30 attorneys with pockets full of cash off to Alaska to dig up dirt. The Obama campaign must be really, really scared of her. Surely most Alaskans must have some nasty things to say.

A new poll from American Viewpoint (not commissioned by the McCain campaign) asks about the job approval for Governor Palin. Overall: 86%. Among Independents: 86%. Among Democrats: 75%.

The Wall Street Journal today took a look at the claim that Sarah Palin’s qualifications to be Vice President are poor because she governs one of the least populated states, with a meager budget of “only” $12 billion and 16,000 full-time state employees. But it turns out that the Governor’s office in Alaska is one of the nation’s most powerful.

For more than two decades Thad Beyle, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina, has maintained an index of “institutional powers” in state offices. He rates governorships on potential length of service, budgetary and appointment authority, veto power and other factors. Mr. Beyle’s findings for 2008 rate Alaska at 4.1 on a scale of 5. The national average is 3.5.

Only four other states — Maryland, New Jersey, New York and West Virginia — concentrate as much power in the Governor’s office as Alaska does, and only one state (Massachusetts) concentrates more. California may be the nation’s most populous state, but its Governor rates as below-average (3.2) in executive authority. This may account in part for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s poor legislative track record. The lowest rating goes to Vermont (2.5) where the Governor (remember Howard Dean) is a figurehead compared to Mrs. Palin.

The Alaskan governor has line-item veto power over the budget and can only be overridden by a three-quarters majority in the Legislature. Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, elected in 1992, had a state budget of $2 billion which was among the smallest in the country. Sarah Palin not only governs a lot of territory, but is an important executive.

For all their praise of dissent, liberals sure don’t cotton it much. Given their crestfallen and incredulous response, one would think Mike Gravel had just told these two liberal radio hosts that Santa Claus won’t be coming this year.

So, what does the former Democrat Senator and presidential candidate from Alaska have to say that upsets them so? That Sarah Palin is doing a great job as governor, has more executive experience than Obama, Biden and McCain combined, and that “Troopergate” is much ado about nothing that will come out in her favor anyway.

By my count, the female host tries to cut the interview short 3 times, as soon as she discovers Gravel won’t be telling her listeners what she wants them to hear.